The optimal contest architecture for symmetric imperfectly discriminating contests is shown to be generically the two-stage tournament (rather than the one-stage contest). In the first stage the contestants compete in several parallel divisions for the right to participate in the second stage....

There are at least two reasons why multiple prizes can be optimal in symmetric imperfectly discriminating contests. First, the introduction of multiple prizes reduces the standard deviation of contestants' effort in asymmetric equilibria, when the majority of contestants actively participate in...

In the recent years, many clubs in the biggest European soccer leagues have run into debts. The sports economic literature provides several explanation for this development, e.g., the league structure (open versus closed league), club constitutions, ruinous rat races between clubs. While the...

In this paper, we discuss a manager's allocation problem. Two managers allocate their heterogeneous employees - each manager allocates two high types and two low types - in groups of two in order to compete for an exogenous contest prize in a two period model. There are three possibilities of...

We develop a stylized two-period game-theoretic model of the strategic choices made by soccer teams when selecting between defensive and attacking team formations, and between non-violent and violent styles of play. Cooperative behavior during the early stages of matches is typically superseded...

We consider a simple tournament model in which individuals auto-select into the contest on the basis of their commonly known strength levels, and privately observed strength-shocks (reflecting temporary deviations from observed levels). The model predicts that the participation rate should...

Online and offline gaming has become a multi-billion dollar industry.However, games of chance are prohibited or tightly regulated in many jurisdictions. Thus, the question whether a game predominantly depends on skill or chance has important legal and regulatory implications. In this paper, we...

We study strategic investment decisions in multi-stage contests with heterogeneous players. Our theoretical model of a round-robin rank-order tournament predicts that players conserve resources in a current contest to spend more in the subsequent contest if the degree of heterogeneity in the...

Wir entwickeln ein Modell für strategisches Spielverhalten bei Glücksspielen nach dem Totalisatorprinzip und wenden es auf die Fußballwettspiele Toto und Torwette an. Unter der Annahme, dass Buchmacherquoten die "wahren" Ausgangswahrscheinlichkeiten der betreffenden Fußballspiele...

Game theory is usually difficult to test precisely in the field because predictions typically depend sensitively on features that are not controlled or observed. We conduct one such test using field data from the Swedish lowest unique positive integer (LUPI) game. In the LUPI game, players pick...